With a car full of both nurses and mates, they would line up for the drive-in, go to a dance or head for the bush to light a bonnie.

“The nurses had to be home by 10pm, but luckily for us on two nights of the week the late pass was a midnight curfew,” Ken says.

Lorraine was a nurse at the home, and among other duties she worked in the kindergarten too.

“All of us mates paired off after a while, and four or five of them married those nurses,” Ken adds.

“We were going to be the first couple married in the new Baptist Church in Edwards Street, with Minister Bouquet officiating. 

“In the end we were number two to get married there.

“We held the wedding breakfast at the Robyn Café in View Street, and then took off for our honeymoon to Canberra. 

“We only got as far as Wodonga though, when the heavens opened and we were stuck in huge floodwater. 

“We didn’t even make it across the Murray. So after two days of the rain, we came back home.

 “We were lucky enough to be offered the caretaker’s house at the Bendigo Pottery by the manager Tom Keith. 

“We had a tin kettling by all the nurses. They threw rocks on the roof and made an awful din,” Lorraine says.“ We stayed there for three years and then were lured by all the ads in the Weekly Times for young couples to go and work on farms. 

“We toured a few and found a mixed farm at Gnarwarre about 20 minutes out of Geelong. It was a good way to save for a deposit, and after three years we came back to Bendigo and bought a house in Kangaroo Flat.”For the next seven years Ken worked three jobs, at the Bendigo City Council, serving petrol and helping a mate do upholstery, and then Lorraine said she was getting to old to have babies, and they better get a wriggle on.

Their first son Jason was born in 1971 and three years later they welcomed Karl into their family. Keeping up the tradition, the couple now have four grandsons. Today Ken is a life member of the Kangaroo Flat CFA, a volunteer at St John of God, president of the Bendigo Easter Fair Society, and raises Australian parrots, in his spare time.

Lorraine is an inveterate collector of salt and pepper shakers and at last count has 3000 in her collection.